Ks2 sats week 2015

[Catbat77]

I have a very nervous dd this morning, wanted to hear other parents thoughts or experiences this week!

TBH I was quite glad they didn't break it down - I think they had a healthy attitude to SATs on the whole and wanted to play down the whole thing as much as possible. I didn't consider asking for actual scores myself.

Dd never knew about targets, levels or anything, she just knew what she'd done well and what she needed to do to improve. Year 6 was like any other year, no extra pressure, booster groups etc and she looks back fondly on her time at the school. She and her friends seem to be flying at secondary so I think it was a good basis for them all.

No level 6 booster classes at DS school either, they just moved on to the extra parts of the curriculum naturally during lessons.

I guess that is only feasible if either the children are setted and the top set all are ready to go along with it, or the teacher does a lot of juggling in regular lessons to accommodate all abilities, which must be very tough but I understand that's what is expected (thank you teachers!).

I would've been unimpressed with the idea of doing extra work during PE, music, or any other lesson or break time.

DSs class had a bit of extra work on level 6 things but it was during ordinary maths lessons. DS had a trumpet lesson in one out of two of those sessions though

He has guitar lessons at lunch time which gets rid of the missing lesson part. Am not sure what he should do next year when he's at secondary school as not too keen on him missing too much, not least because I'm not convinced he'd find out what he'd missed when he wasn't there.

Brecon that is fab

My school hire a ukulele teacher to teach the whole class (y4).

Flute/clarinet/cello is taught at lunchtime and playtime to small groups of children.

If a child in my class only attended 80% of my Maths lessons, I would not be able to guarantee understanding and progress.

Where I went to school (admittedly not in the UK), music lessons were organised so you didn't miss the same lesson each week. So if you had the 9am lesson in week 1, then you had the 9.20 lesson the following week and so on.

I'm not sure if it's easier or harder to keep track of who's missed what from a teaching point of view that way. But certainly once we got to upper primary/secondary it was our responsibility to catch up on what we'd missed.

We try to ensure that music tuition takes place when other children are having a music lesson. The class may for example be learning recorders while individual pupils are having clarinet or flute lessons. Other lessons take place outside normal teaching time.

And yes we do whole class ukulele, recorder and ocarina lessons.

Mrz, does your school charge for ukulele lessons and the hire/purchase of an ukulele?

We don't.

No we don't

As our music room is in full-time use, 5 days a week (and for 3 mornings another room is also in use for music lessons), we can't ensure that every child has their music lesson when the class is learning music - because the varied peripatetic music teacher can't all teach the pupils of Class X tgheir individual lessons at the same time, while the class does music.

All the music teachers do rotate their tmetables, hopwever, so a child misses different lessons each week.

We have music in classrooms or the hall if necessary

That's certainly our approach too.

The debate started because we were talking about children missing their PE entitlement because of booster classes, which is totally unacceptable and against statutory guidelines. We seem to have moved on to a different issue, but children in other year groups are just as entitled to receive the statutory entitlement, MN free school or not, lljjkk.

S'pose it's just those of us that live in Narnia, read frozen waste lands of the North, that have to pay for ukulele lessons and the added purchase/ hire of an instrument.
Forgive me, I'm being naughty...

Does Durham count as North?

Not sure its a north south thing. It just depends on how well services are funded and where you can get funding from.

Or inner city Leeds?!

Dunno, what do you reckon, Mrz?

I reckon I'm north unless you're talking Scotland

The North remembers

Feenie it does. And winter is coming.

Mrz, I did say I was being naughty and you obviously know so.
As a Northumbrian lass, I'm disappointed you have chosen a county to score a Point!
However, perhaps you too have indulged in a spot of naughtiness?

I was in exile in Northumberland for a couple of years until it got too much for me ??

Indeed it is. However, there are still friends in the North.

How long do you reckon we can keep this going?